REAL ESTATE
Housing transactions decline
The property market in northern Taiwan remained sluggish last month, as an index gauging the market climate fell from a month earlier. Citing a survey, Chinese-language Housing Monthly said the housing index for northern Taiwan fell 4.2 points last month, following a 5.1 percent increase in July, as housing transactions fell during Ghost Month, the seventh month of the lunar calendar. Meanwhile, the value of presale housing projects that came on the market totaled NT$50 billion (US$1.6 billion) last month, down from NT$70 billion in July, the magazine said.
FOREIGN EXCHANGE
Reserves reach new high
Foreign-exchange reserves hit a new high last month, largely on the back of an increase in returns on the central bank’s investment portfolio, the bank said on Friday. Data compiled by the central bank showed that the country’s forex reserves stood at US$468.17 billion, up US$939 million from a month earlier. The increase in its investment returns offset the effects of volatility in the equity market, the bank said. It was the third consecutive month in which Taiwan’s forex reserves reached a new high, the data showed.
ELECTRONICS
Hon Hai posts record sales
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海) saw its sales hit the highest-ever level for August in the company’s history, with analysts attributing it to it being the peak season. The company posted NT$398.82 billion in consolidated sales, up 0.2 percent from a month earlier and also up 0.51 percent from a year earlier, Hon Hai said on Thursday. In the first eight months of this year, Hon Hai’s consolidated sales stood at NT$3.01 trillion, up 3.89 percent from a year earlier. The eight-month sales figure also hit a record high.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to